


The Assassination of Harry Styles' Dignity

by wishforwishes



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst and Porn, Bathing/Washing, Bitter Exes, Cissexism, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Shaving, There's a lot of general messiness and toxicity I'm not going to lie, i'm on my gender bullshit as per usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:13:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22993006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishforwishes/pseuds/wishforwishes
Summary: Harry just wants to relieve some stress after a shitty night. Things don't go as planned.
Relationships: Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles
Comments: 23
Kudos: 72
Collections: Hairy Styles Pubefest 2020





	The Assassination of Harry Styles' Dignity

Harry has only been twenty-six for a couple of hours, and he’s spent most of that time alone in his hotel room, wallowing in guilt. 

“Even we can’t control the weather, H,” Jeff had said apologetically, after the fire department officially gave the call for an evacuation. “Especially not Florida in winter.”

Then he’d suggested they all go out for drinks for a birthday celebration on a smaller scale, but Harry couldn’t imagine a worse end to the night than partying and pretending he hadn’t just let thousands of people down. Jeff had sighed and let Harry beg off, promising to make Harry’s excuses to the rest of the band as long as _Harry_ _promised_ to stay off his phone and not look at what anyone was saying about the last-minute cancellation. 

If he were to make a list of places to barricade himself for a proper sulk, Harry supposes he could do worse than a luxury suite at The Villa Casa Casuarina. The beds are jewel-encrusted and approximately the size of a squash court: impossible to actually fall asleep in, but perfect for feeling sorry for oneself. 

Harry makes himself a valley between two mountains of beaded throw pillows and proceeds to spend more time than he cares to admit staring blankly at the loudly painted ceiling, being maudlin about everything that’s gone wrong tonight. He’s decidedly _not_ thinking about the people (or one specific person) he would normally seek comfort from in a situation like this. He hasn’t spoken to that person in over a year. Which is fine. Harry’s fine being alone, and spending his twenty-sixth birthday alone, and leaving all of his fans alone in the rain, and being a disappointment to absolutely everyone. 

Once the obnoxious grandfather clock in the corner of the room has ticked over to 3AM, Harry acknowledges he's not going to sleep tonight. 

He breaks out the candles instead. Ny-Oh bought him a trio of new Diptyque scents as an early birthday present, and he hasn’t gotten the chance to try any of them out yet. He grabs all three of them, along with his phone, purse, and toiletry bag, and lazy-man-carries them all into the ensuite bathroom. 

The obscene decadence comes with him; the bathroom alone is bigger than most standard hotel rooms, but most of that space is taken up by the tub. 

It’s a porcelain monstrosity, half-sunken into the floor and surrounded by an honest to god four-poster. A delicate gossamer fabric hangs on all four sides, not a standard plastic shower curtain in sight. The rest of the room is adorned with the same over-the-top baroque trappings as the rest of the suite, but Harry keeps the lights off in an attempt to lessen the distraction.

Lighting the candles and lining them up on the ledge of the bathroom sink is the first part of the ritual. Then he has to wait a few minutes for the scents to properly start perfuming the air: eau rose, eau moheli, and olene eau. Ny-Oh chose solely from the floral collection, and the combination feels like he’s stepped into a botanical garden.

Only once the atmosphere is perfect does he unzip his toiletries bag and root around for a jar of shaving cream, a sachet of moisturizer, and a bubblegum pink razor. He sets all three gently on the edge of the tub. Finally, he unwraps a bath bomb (a deep black color with glitter flecks) and starts filling the tub with hot water. 

If this doesn't get him out of his head, nothing will. 

He folds his clothes carefully over the vanity chair and makes sure a fluffy robe and towel are within reach. The last step is adding the bath bomb to the tub, and then he can finally step in himself. 

Harry slips down into the shimmery black water until he’s submerged from the neck down and his body is shielded from view. Then, for good measure, he dunks his head under too, for as long as he can hold his breath. It’s cleansing, picturing the unbroken surface of the water above him, made opaque by the bath bomb. It hides whatever is underneath. It doesn’t have to be him, or his body. Anyone could be in this tub, or no one. For a few seconds, he can pretend that Harry Styles isn’t in this room at all. 

Once his skin is pruny and soft from soaking, he props his legs up out of the water. The left leg is first, as always: Harry carefully lathers it in cream and then picks up his razor. 

Starting with the curve of his ankle, he shaves carefully and slowly up his leg, careful not to nick his skin. It’s been a while since he’s been stressed enough to need this, so he has to do a second pass in a few places, where his leg hair has grown thicker. He can start to feel the ball of tension that’s been building at the base of his skull melt away. 

Harry has to take a moment to debate with himself when he reaches the crease where his leg meets his left hip. 

Sometimes he feels off-kilter and wrong when he shaves his pubic hair, but tonight, he suspects he’ll just feel weirder if he only goes part of the way. So he reaches for a new dollop of foam and keeps scraping away hair, trying to be as delicate with his movements as he can. 

Once he’s completely smooth from the waist down on the left side of his body, he starts in on his right leg. As he does, he hears a voice in his head: not his own, but one intimately familiar to him. 

“You know, it’s there for a reason. Don’t come crying to me later when you’re itching like mad, pop star.” 

Nick had teased Harry mercilessly the first time he’d asked him, shyly, to shave him _down there_ , because he’d never done it before and he was worried he’d slice his dick off. But despite the jabs, he’d done as Harry asked. He'd spread him out in bed on top of every bath flannel in the apartment, and gave him a proper introduction to manscaping. 

It was hard to believe Nick knew as much about it as he did, considering the veritable rug on his chest and bush to match. When Harry’d asked him, Nick had grinned devilishly. 

“You’re not the first twink I’ve had in my bed, love,” he’d said, almost apologetically. As if Harry had even the slightest illusions that this thing between them was more than a simple fling. 

He’d remembered thinking he was only lucky enough to be in this position because Nick was between barely legal models at the moment. Of course, then it _had_ become something more, as they became better friends and Harry got older. Almost a proper relationship, when they were in the same time zone. And then Nick finally found a new twink, Harry thinks bitterly, and now the two of them are nothing to each other at all. 

A sudden sharp pain at the back of his knee makes him hiss. He’s managed to cut himself after all. 

That’s what he gets for thinking something so petty. Mesh seems like a lovely person, not that he’s ever gotten the chance to meet him. He knows that Nick’s serious about him. That’s _why_ Harry’s never met him, probably. And why Nick hasn’t called Harry up in more than a year for so much as a brunch invite. 

Harry tries to refocus on his leg, keeping his mind as blank as possible; the whole point of shaving tonight was to relax, not to just exchange one mess to overthink about for another. 

This lasts only until he’s finished shaving. As soon as he starts soothing his skin with a coat of moisturizer, his mind goes rogue on him again. Nick had been the one who taught him to use some kind of lotion afterwards, to prevent razor burn, or chafing. Of course, when he’d been applying it for Harry, he’d had a specific destination in mind. 

“Stop teasing me,” Harry remembers asking, ashamed of the whining tinge of his voice but pleading anyway. “Please just touch me.” 

“I am touching you,” Nick had said, the contrary fuck, but then thank god he’d finally slid his hands the rest of the way up and wrapped his long fingers around Harry’s cock. He’d pressed Harry down into the mattress as he jerked him off, his body hair tickling Harry’s newly bare skin and making him squirm. 

Nick had noticed, of course.

“Hope you’re not going to ask me to shave next.”

Harry had shaken his head frantically, but he wouldn’t have voiced his thoughts even if his brain hadn’t currently been leaking out his dick. 

Nick had gotten the picture anyway, and been delighted: “Oh, so you _like_ the contrast, huh?” 

Eighteen year old Harry, spread out on a bed in an older man’s London apartment, had gone red with embarrassment. But twenty-six year old Harry, lounging in the bathroom of a literal Versace-worthy suite in Miami, just leans back in the tub and starts carefully scratching his nails up and down his smooth thighs. He ignores his thickening cock for the moment, because he knows this fantasy — this memory — like an old friend.

He remembers the way he’d turned his face to the side, not wanting to look at Nick as he’d mumbled his way through a confession. That he liked the reminder that he was in bed with a man. 

“Ladies can have body hair too. That’s not very feminist of you, dear Harold.” 

“Can you please stop taking the piss for one second?” Harry’s reply had been through gritted teeth: part irritation and part overwhelm, because Nick hadn’t stopped jerking him off. 

He hadn’t, at the time, been able to admit to it — that he liked being with a man when he himself felt like less of one, when he was smooth and hairless and curled up small under Nick. Like a girl, Harry has no trouble admitting now, as he reaches down between his legs to thumb the head of his cock, still hidden in the water. 

He leans back a little further, until his chest is submerged again too. It’s easy to imagine what a voyeur might see, if they pulled back the four-poster’s curtains and saw him squirming in the tub. They could mistake him for a girl, maybe: his hair made heavier and longer by the water, his legs freshly shaved and flexing in time with the strokes of his hand. 

Yes, Harry thinks. They’d see a girl, and they’d get a flash of sordid pleasure, watching the water churning with the movements of her hand and knowing she was playing with her clit, even though they couldn’t see it. 

Even as he hurtles toward a quick and messy orgasm, his mind strays back to Nick; what would Nick have thought? If Harry had ever told him he thought of himself as Nick’s girl sometimes, when they got off together? What would Nick say if he could see Harry now?

An absolutely awful idea hits just as his balls are drawing tight, and before he can second guess himself, he lifts himself fully out of the tub, so he comes all over himself instead of in the water. 

Dripping glittery dark water all over the tiled floor, Harry waddles over to his phone, his cock still softening between his thighs. He may be feeling reckless right now, but not enough to actually send someone a dick pic; he sits on the ledge of the sink and carefully angles the camera to get a photo of his freshly shaved legs, tucking them up enough to hide his cock but not enough to hide the come drying on his stomach. 

He texts the photo to Nick with no caption, and then he waits. 

Two hours later, it’s almost dawn in Miami, and Harry is back in bed, swaddled by both pillows and a purple bathrobe this time. He hasn’t been able to sleep, but he’s calmed down enough after the bath and the wank to bring his notebook with him to bed, and he’s trying to take advantage of his insomnia to get some song-writing in. 

He’d set his phone down across the room before he’d crawled into bed, not sure if he was hoping or dreading that Nick might text him back. He’d failed to consider the possibility that he would _fucking call him._

Harry watches his phone buzz across the coffee table with detached horror. He knows immediately that it’s Nick calling; the ringtone blaring out — a very obnoxious Spice Girls clip — has been assigned to his contact for Nick for years. He doesn’t consider answering for even a second; if Nick’s _calling_ him he’s probably spitting mad. He turns his attention back to his notebook instead.

As a tinny version of Victoria Beckham’s voice croons nonsensically, he crosses out the line he’d been fiddling with before the interruption and chews on his pen for a bit, trying to recover his train of thought. The metaphor he’d been thinking of seems to be clean gone, though. 

It’s almost funny: Harry tensely waiting in silence for a bubbly pop song to stop playing. It feels like he recorded the audio clip for it in a different, happier lifetime, when he wanted to have everything in his life connected to Nick to be a cute inside joke. 

Finally, the room falls into silence again. Harry breathes a sigh of relief and ambles out of bed to grab his phone, ready to switch it off like Jeff asked him to do several hours ago. It starts ringing again in his hand, because of fucking course Nick would call twice in a row, instead of just leaving a voicemail like every other person in their thirties still does. 

If Harry turns off his phone now, Nick’s only option would be voicemail; but then he’d know that Harry turned off his phone in order to avoid him, and Harry may be a coward but he doesn’t want _Nick_ to think of him as one. He takes a deep breath and answers the call, expecting either a mocking greeting or for Nick to go straight to the slagging off. Instead, he gets: 

“Are you staying at Gianni Versace's mansion right now?”

Unbelievable. 

“Is that seriously the first thing you’re asking me?” 

“What else is there to ask about,” is Nick’s flippant response. “Your show got cancelled, so you got drunk and moody and sent an ill-advisable photo to an ex. Straightforward. The only interesting thing in the photo is the tiles in the background.” 

It has the shape of an insult, but Harry realizes there is a question hidden in Nick’s words. 

“I’m sober, actually,” Harry says quietly. 

He can practically hear Nick's demeanor change once he says those magic words. 

“Is that so.” His tone is so light now it’s almost airy, but there’s a deadly sharp undercurrent rising up. “Well, I'm glad to know you weren’t soused when you shaved. It’d be irresponsible, handling a razor when you’re likely to get distracted and cut an artery by accident.”

Harry inhales sharply. He hadn’t been sure if Nick would notice (or admit he’d noticed) that his legs were shaved. 

“I did get distracted a few times anyway,” he admits.

“Is that so. What on earth were you thinking about, that distracted you.” 

It’s not a question; it’s a flat-out, cat-that-got-the-cream _drawl._ The type of flirty ego Nick would have had with him half a decade ago. Harry doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing here, but he’s selfish enough to not bring up Nick’s boyfriend -- not if it will mean an end to this conversation. 

“I was remembering you teaching me to shave.” 

The confession makes Nick hum speculatively. 

“That still does it for you, huh?” 

It’s not quite mockery. It’s not quite anything else. And it makes Harry shiver with arousal and cross his legs. 

“I remember how hot you got over me _not_ shaving, too,” Nick continues. Harry can hear rustling in the background, like Nick's getting more comfortable, wherever he is on this late morning in London.

“You were always pulling on my chest hair when we snogged, or even my armpits sometimes, like a little grot. But I think you liked my bush the best, didn’t you?” 

Harry’s mouth starts watering immediately. Nick’s right, of course. He remembers how he would drag his hands through that thick thatch of pubes while sucking Nick off.

“I liked how you smelled,” he admits, curling his fist in his lap but not letting himself touch his cock again yet. “I liked breathing you in, and just forgetting about my own body for a while.” 

The musky scent of Nick’s body hair, markedly different from Harry’s plucked and perfumed body, had always got him closer to coming than the cock down his throat had. 

“Is that what you were thinking about, Harry?” Nick asks. “Were you imagining me shoving you down on my dick, until your nose was pressed so far into my pubes you couldn’t breathe?”

They’d done that before too, on a few occasions when Harry didn’t have to perform the next day. But Nick’s not right, this time. He’s dancing around the truth, but it’s a truth Harry’s never given to him. 

He’s got nothing left to lose now, though. Not his dignity, certainly. The last vestiges of that vanished when he sent Nick the photo. And he lost Nick himself more than a year ago, on a picture perfect day in Hampstead Heath. 

“I was imagining that I was a girl,” Harry says. “And that was always easier to imagine with you, because you were so much hairier and more masculine than me.” 

There’s an incredulous silence, which Harry expected, but it only lasts a few seconds.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been described as more masculine than someone else,” Nick muses. He doesn’t sound surprised, but Nick was always good at staying solid when thrown a curveball. A necessary skill on live radio, Harry thinks, trying desperately to speculate about something other than what’s hiding under Nick’s careful non-reaction.

“You never answered my first question, you know,” Nick tells him a moment later, his voice chiding now. Harry blinks, confused for a moment. 

“Oh,” he says finally, trying to hide his hurt at the realization Nick’s changing the subject completely. “Yeah, I am at the Versace mansion. But it’s a hotel now.”

“I bet it had to undergo a lot of renovations for that,” Nick says, still casual. “A bunch of changes. But I’m sure it’s still just as beautiful now. Maybe even more so, cause it’s not private property now. Other people get to see more of it, don’t they?” 

Harry’s about to say that he finds it all a bit tacky, really, when he realizes what Nick’s telling him. What he’s _actually_ telling him. 

“Oh,” he says, feeling dumb and grateful and wrong-footed all at once. Before he can muster up more than that one syllable, he hears another voice in the background of Nick’s call. 

He can’t make out any words, but the way Nick suddenly breathes ‘shit’ can only mean it’s Mesh. The guilt that Harry hadn’t let himself feel earlier comes rushing in, like he’d suddenly dunked himself in the tub again. 

“Look, it was great chatting,” Nick says, and his tone is now as breezily cheerful as if he were speaking with a BBC colleague he privately hated. “I’ve got to go, but we should talk more soon. I want to hear more about those renovations.” 

Harry doesn’t know if he should say anything and risk his own voice being recognized, if Mesh is close enough to hear the other end of the line. Before he can make up his mind, he hears the telltale static hum that means the call’s ended. 

Well. They could have had a worse first post-break up conversation, Harry supposes, but probably not a messier one. 

He expects that he’s going to feel even worse, now. On top of what he was already dwelling on, now he can add ‘almost succeeded in instigating phone sex with someone he knows is in a serious relationship’ to the list, along with ‘sort of came out in the most inappropriate way possible to someone who used to be a close friend, and whose only reaction was a confusing metaphor’. 

Instead, Harry falls asleep in his stupid rich boy bed after all, just as the sun is rising. 

He wakes up when his phone buzzes a few hours later. It’s not a text message from Nick, or an apology email from the venue. It’s a weather notification, informing him that it’s shaping up to be a beautiful day in Miami, now that the storm is finally over. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, here it is! My contribution to pubefest! Many thanks to the mods for coming up with such a delightful concept; I can only hope I've done it justice with this fic. Hope you enjoyed reading. This one took a while to percolate, but I like where it ended up. I DO have some ideas for coming back to it in the future, though. We'll see!


End file.
